Engaging Abstractions: a workshop in four sessions, at the Gainesville Fine Arts Association

 

INSTRUCTOR: Kim Tanzer 

DATES: 

Sunday, September 27

Sunday, October 4

Sunday, October 11

Sunday, October 18
TIME: 1 - 3pm

COST: (includes supplies and all four sessions)
GFAA members: $200
Non-Members: $250

* Three discounted tickets are available for GFAA members - send us an email!

 

LOCATION:

The Gainesville Fine Arts Association

1314 S Main St, Gainesville, FL

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:
In a way, all art is abstract. Artists always select, or abstract, only certain elements from the world’s infinite possibilities. But in the past century many artists have increasingly tried to eliminate realistic representation from their work to focus on perceptual, psychological, and political questions.

 

This workshop will adopt four of abstraction’s major impulses, one per session, as artists’ prompts. Each session will begin with a short introduction, inspired by and featuring the work of well-known artists. Most of each class will be spent experimenting with the issues, techniques, and styles presented, and end with a brief period of group reflection.

 

ABOUT EACH SESSION:

Color As Subject: September 27, 1-3pm

Color has been a primary force in the work of Josef Albers, Sam Gilliam and many others. In this session students will experiment with color in two ways--collage using colored papers to focus on color interactions, and painted gouache, to focus on color mixing.

 

Invoking The Invisible: October 4, 1-3pm

During the late 19th and early 20th century artists began exploring the invisible and the spiritual, prompted by emerging technologies like electricity and philosophies like transcendentalism.Artists such as Hilma af Klimt and Cy Twombley explored the role of the unconscious in creating art. During this session artists will employ the technique of “automatic writing” to create a graphite drawing.

 

Realism Relaxed: October 11, 1-3pm 

Many artists evolved personal languages from the world they observed, including Piet Mondrian and Jean-Michel Basquiat. For this session artists will begin with a reference image--their own work, a photo, or a famous piece of art--and selectively edit, exaggerate, or otherwise extract a new work, using gouache.

 

Chance: October 18, 1-3pm

Beginning in the early 20th century some artists developed creative methods to unseat their own visual habits. Visual artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Sol LeWitt, and even choreographers and composers embraced what are called ‘chance procedures.’ For this session, artists will begin with a directed process to create a chance procedure, resulting in anew piece.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Kim Tanzer studied studio art and modern dance at Duke University and the University ofMinnesota, then taught art in the Durham NC public schools before she began a decades-long career as an architect, professor, and administrator. She taught architecture studios and architectural theory at the University of Florida and the University of Virginia. Following her term as dean at U Va she returned to Gainesville and turned her full-time attention to art-making. She makes drawings, paintings and videos, and exhibits across Florida. 

 

View her work at www.kimtanzer.net